Kitabı oku: «The Honeymoon Prize»

CHAPTER ONE

‘I’M GOING to have an affair.’

Pel had been running on the treadmill next to hers at an enviable pace, and with an extremely irritating lack of effort, but Freya was delighted to see that he missed his step at that. ‘You’re going to do what?’ he demanded as he recovered.

Freya grinned, pleased at the impact of her deliberately casual announcement. ‘You heard.’

‘Who with?’

‘Dan Freer,’ she said as nonchalantly as she could between gasps for breath. She was new to the gym and had yet to master the art of using any of the machines without puffing and panting and generally teetering on the verge of collapse.

‘No!’ Pel stared at her, flatteringly impressed. ‘Not Dan Freer, as in ace reporter and owner of the coolest leather jacket on television?’

‘That’s the one.’

He whistled soundlessly. ‘Well! When did all this happen?’

‘It hasn’t yet,’ Freya had to confess. ‘But it’s going to! I’ve decided that you and Lucy are right. It’s time to change my life, and seducing Dan Freer is the first step.’

‘What brought this on?’ asked Pel curiously, and Freya adjusted her speed to a walk so that she could talk properly.

Of course, she knew she was supposed to be pushing herself to the limit, but it was a question of priorities, and she had to balance convincing Pel to support her new mission in life against the trim, taut, toned body she had been promised by the instructor who had set her the torture otherwise known as a fitness programme.

‘It’s my birthday next week,’ she told Pel, who was obsessive about keeping fit, and had barely broken into a sweat after running for twenty minutes. ‘I’m going to be twenty-seven. Only three more years and I’ll be thirty!’ she added melodramatically. ‘What’s going to happen to me after that?’

‘You’ll be thirty-one?’ suggested Pel. ‘Just a wild guess, of course!’

Freya stuck out her tongue. ‘You know what I mean. It’ll be downhill all the way into middle age and before I know where I am I’ll be wearing a felt hat and keeping cats. I want to live a little before then! I’m stuck in a rut,’ she complained. ‘I never go anywhere. I never do anything. I never meet any men.’

‘You do meet men. Lucy and I are always trailing eligible types under your nose.’

‘Like who?’

‘Like Dominic. I know he’s an estate agent, but he couldn’t help that. He was clean and solvent, and he really liked you.’

She stared at him. ‘How many estate agents called Dominic do you know, Pel? The one I met wasn’t the slightest bit interested in me!’

‘Yes, he was, but you never gave him any encouragement.’ Pel shook his head knowingly. ‘Your trouble is, you don’t read the signals right.’

‘So you and Lucy keep telling me,’ said Freya crossly. It was an old argument. ‘Anyway, he wasn’t my type. I know I said I was going to wait for Ben Affleck, but there’s no saying when he’ll be free, and in the meantime I want someone more exciting than an estate agent from Chigwell. I’m tired of being a good girl. I want to live dangerously for a change, and I’ve decided that Dan would be perfect for me.’

Pel looked a little dubious. ‘You don’t think he’s just the teensiest bit out of your league?’

‘Well, thank you for that vote of confidence!’

‘You were the one who told me he’d been on the cover of People,’ Pel pointed out. ‘He sounds seriously cool.’

‘And I’m not, I suppose?’

Pel looked at his friend. She was labouring on the treadmill, puffing with exertion, her face bright red and her fringe sticking sweatily to her forehead. ‘I hate to be the one to break this to you, pet,’ he said affectionately, ‘but you are never going to be cool!’

Freya sighed. She hadn’t needed Pel to tell her that. ‘I know.’

‘It’s not that you’re not a pretty girl,’ he went on hastily. ‘In fact, you could be very pretty if you made a bit of an effort.’

‘I am making an effort,’ she objected. ‘I’m at the gym, aren’t I?’

‘In body, but not in spirit,’ said Pel austerely. ‘Look at you now, moving at the pace of a lethargic slug! If you really want to change your life, you’re going to have to lift your game.’

Grumbling under her breath, Freya increased the speed on the treadmill by a fraction. Pel watched her with beady blue eyes until she grudgingly upped it another three levels.

‘The point is, you’re too nice,’ he went on, having sniffed his disapproval at her lack of enthusiasm but settled for the compromise. ‘We all adore you, and we know that you’re not nearly as tough as you seem beneath that spiky exterior of yours. I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.’

‘But the only way to be sure that I won’t get hurt is to sit at home, which is what I’ve been doing for most of the last five years,’ Freya objected. ‘I’m sick of it! I’ve realised that the perfect man isn’t going to come and knock on my door, so I’ve got to go out and find him for myself. And you know what? The day after I made that decision, Dan walked into the office. It’s like it was meant to be!’

The treadmill was blurring beneath her feet now, and she clutched at the bar to stop herself being borne backwards and tossed ignominiously at the feet of the fitness instructors who were prowling around the gym, looking effortlessly lithe and faintly contemptuous.

‘Oh, Pel, he’s so gorgeous,’ she puffed. ‘He’s got these deep brown eyes, and when he smiles at you, you just melt into a little puddle on the floor. And you should hear his voice. It’s a real American drawl, so deep and so slow it sort of reverberates up and down your spine…’ She shuddered lasciviously at the mere thought of Dan’s voice.

‘He sounds divine,’ said Pel with a touch of envy.

‘Oh, he is. But he’s not just incredibly sexy and unbelievably cool. He’s intelligent and funny and exciting. Dan doesn’t flog into the office on the tube every day. He’s off dodging bullets in some war zone or working undercover on a story that really matters.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘He makes every other man I meet look so boring.’

‘Hey, thanks!’

‘You know you don’t count.’ Freya would have waved dismissively if she had dared to let go of the bar. ‘The thing is, Dan’s really nice, too. When he rings to talk to the foreign news editor, he always asks how I am and what I’m up to. He’s not like…the other journalists…’

She was so short of breath that her words kept coming out in fits and starts. ‘They only ever…want to whinge…about their expenses…but Dan’s…really…interested…in what you’re…saying…Pel, can we stop now?’ she pleaded, gasping. ‘I can’t talk on here!’

Usually Pel would insist on her completing her programme, and would stand over her like a bullying sergeant major until she did, but she was banking on the fact that he would want to hear everything about her plan to seduce Dan Freer.

Sure enough, twenty minutes later found them cosily ensconsed in the gym bar, fresh from a shower and wrapped in a glow of self-satisfaction on Pel’s part, and relief on Freya’s.

‘So, what does Lucy think?’ Pel asked, handing Freya a gin and tonic.

‘She’s all in favour in principle, but she’s very worried about Dan’s surname. She says I can’t possibly call myself Freya Freer!’ Freya rolled her eyes. ‘I told her I wasn’t interested in marriage, but I might as well have spared my breath. You know what she’s like! Ever since she married Steve last year, her mission in life is to frogmarch everyone else up the aisle.’

‘She’s got a point,’ said Pel. ‘Freya Freer does sound ridiculous. It’s impossible to say, for a start. Try it—Freya Freer, Freya Freer…See? It makes you sound as if you’ve got a lisp.’

Exasperated, Freya banged her glass down on the bar. ‘Look, there’s no question of marriage. It’s not about commitment and mortgages and kids. It’s about a no-holds barred, whistle-blowing, rootin’-tootin’ affair with bells on, OK? I want sex, not love,’ she insisted, and Pel pursed his lips.

‘You say that, but you’re not really the type.’

‘I am now. My hormones are on the rampage!’

‘That’s all very well, but there’s not going to be a lot of bells ringing and stars bursting going on with you in London and him in the Balkans! Why not pick on someone closer to home?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Freya triumphantly. ‘He’s coming back to London. Next week! I had a long chat with him today when my boss was in the editorial meeting. You know he works for one of those US cable news networks whose name I can never remember?’

Pel looked puzzled. ‘I thought he was one of your reporters?’

‘No, he just does occasional pieces for the Examiner. The American networks have got so much more money than us. They often charter a plane and fly reporters and equipment into trouble spots which newspapers just can’t get to, and if that happens, and Dan’s going in anyway, he’ll write an article for us at the same time. We’re a British newspaper, and he works for a US twenty-four-hour news channel, so it’s not as if there’s a conflict of interest.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, flicking her light brown hair back over her shoulders, eager to get back to her story, ‘Dan told me today that he’s hoping to get a promotion. He’s been what they call a “fireman”. That means he gets sent in whenever you have a disaster or a war or a riot, stuff like that. He covers the story while it’s breaking, and then flies out again, so although he’s been based in London he’s hardly ever here. He thinks he’s going to get a permanent post in their London office and—get this!—it turns out that he lives just round the corner from me at the moment!’

Pel raised his brows, impressed in spite of himself. ‘I have to admit it’s sounding promising,’ he admitted. ‘Lots of opportunities to bump into him at the local supermarket, that kind of thing?’

‘Exactly! But it gets better!’ Freya took a self-congratulatory sip of her gin. ‘So there we were, chatting away, and Dan tells me that he’s flying back to London next Thursday, and I just happen to mention that it’s my birthday on Thursday.’

‘Did he ask how old you’re going to be?’

‘His manners are much too good for that,’ she said loftily. ‘No, he asked what I was doing to celebrate and then he said—this is the best bit— “You seem like the kind of girl who’d celebrate in style”!’

Pel laughed. ‘You didn’t tell him that we’re going to the pub and will no doubt end up with an Indian takeaway, then?’

‘No, I didn’t. I said I was having a real cocktail party that weekend. I told him everyone was going to dress up and we were going to have dry martinis, shaken not stirred, and all that kind of thing, and Dan said that sounded great. So,’ Freya went on, working up to a climax that was breathless in every sense, ‘I asked if he’d like to come, and he said he would!’

‘What?’

‘I know, isn’t it brilliant?’ She beamed at him. ‘And I said I was inviting lots of people from the Examiner.’

‘Frey-a!’

‘I had to, otherwise it would have been obvious that I was only interested in him, and he wouldn’t have come.’

‘And now that he is coming, you’re going to have to lay on a cocktail party for a load of people you hardly know!’ Pel shook his head disapprovingly.

‘I do know them,’ said Freya, faintly defensive. ‘I work with them. I thought I’d invite everybody, not just the other newsroom secretaries, like me, but all the subs and the reporters and the photographers. They’re always up for a party and free drinks!’

‘But, Freya, you can’t afford it.’ Pel had switched into major motherly mode. ‘You’re massively in debt, you got chucked out of your last flat because you couldn’t pay the rent and you’re in some crappy job with no prospects that pays you really badly for the privilege of working in an interesting place. Everyone else has got their lives and careers sorted out, but you seem to be happy to drift on struggling to make ends meet from month to month without any thought to the future.’

Freya sighed. ‘Honestly, Pel, you’re worse than my father,’ she complained.

‘Your father’s a very sensible man,’ said Pel sternly. ‘Have you any idea of how much cocktail parties cost, Freya? It’s not like bring a bottle and sit on the floor. If you’re going to do it, you’ll have to do it with style.’

‘I know, and that’s why I need you to help me,’ she said coaxingly. ‘Think about it, Pel. It could be really excellent! It’s a chance for Dan to see me being glamorous, not just the girl who answers the phone on the newsdesk. I’ll put my hair up and wear a little black dress, and when he comes in, I’ll be surrounded by sophisticated friends.’

Her green eyes narrowed as she visualised the scene. ‘I’ll be sparkling and witty, making everyone laugh, or—’ She broke off, considering the matter. ‘Or would it be better for me to be looking cool and mysterious? What do you think? I don’t want to put Dan off by playing too hard to get, after all.’

‘Frankly, pet, I can’t see you carrying off cool and mysterious,’ said Pel, sucked into her fantasy despite himself, as Freya had known he would be.

‘No,’ she agreed with a sigh. She had always longed for that sultry, faintly sulky look, but it was hopeless when you were a galumphing great thing with wide, innocent green eyes and hair that obstinately refused to do what it was told.

‘I’ll have to go for being the life and soul of the party instead,’ she decided. She sucked on her lemon for a bit, thinking about it. ‘Yes, fun would work. I don’t suppose Dan’s had a lot of that where he’s been recently.’

She warmed to the theme. ‘He’ll come in, see me there, drinking cocktails in my little black dress, having a great time and surrounded by all these other incredibly glamorous friends…It’s bound to make him look at me differently, isn’t it?’

‘I hate to spoil this fantasy of yours,’ said Pel, ‘but where exactly are you going to find all these glamorous friends before next weekend?’

Freya waved this aside. ‘You’ll all have to pretend,’ she said. ‘It’s just a question of standing around in a dinner jacket or a black dress and not smiling too much. It’ll be fun!’ She laid her hand on his arm. ‘But it won’t work without you. You will help, won’t you?’

Pel made an attempt to keep up his show of disapproval at her extravagance, but in the end he succumbed. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I need a bartender. You know about things like martinis—and Marco could give you a hand. He looks like the kind of guy who knows one end of a cocktail shaker from another!’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Pel with a resigned sigh that imperfectly concealed the fact that it was exactly the kind of situation he revelled in. ‘At least I’ll get a chance to eyeball the famous Dan Freer. Now, we’re going to need to find proper cocktail glasses,’ he warned. ‘You can’t just have a martini in any old glass. And you’ll need proper canapés,’ he went on, warming to his task. ‘A bowl of corn chips just won’t do!’

Freya dug into her bag for a pen and wrote ‘glasses’ and ‘nibbles’ on the back of an envelope. ‘What else?’

‘You’ll have to decide on a venue. What’s this new place you’re living in like?’

‘Perfect for a party,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘It’s a loft in a converted warehouse, with a big open-plan living area. All steel and polished floorboards—a bit minimal for my taste, but the view across the city is wonderful.’

‘It sounds fab,’ said Pel enviously. ‘How on earth can you afford a place like that?’

‘I can’t. I’m not paying rent. I’m just house-sitting until the owner comes back.’

Pel whistled soundlessly. ‘How did you swing that?’

‘Lucy arranged it.’ There was the faintest trace of reserve in Freya’s voice. ‘The apartment belongs to her brother.’

‘Joe? I thought he was still a student?’

‘Not Joe. Her older brother, Max.’

Freya was sure that she sounded perfectly normal, but Pel’s eyes had immediately brightened with speculative interest. ‘Oh?’ he said, in the way only Pel could, with at least sixteen syllables and due warning that he would insist on knowing every last tiny detail, no matter how trivial, before he would let the matter drop.

‘He’s a civil engineer.’ Freya picked up her drink, would-be casual. ‘He runs some kind of aid organisation and is always running off to Africa and places like that, building roads and irrigation systems. You know the kind of thing.’

Pel gave a kind of shrug to indicate that he didn’t really, but didn’t particularly want to know any more.

‘He’s in Africa now, as a matter of fact,’ she went on. ‘Lucy heard that he was going away just when they put up the rent on my old flat and I couldn’t find anywhere else to live. She suggested to Max that I look after the apartment for him while he was overseas.’

It sounded reasonable enough, Freya thought. It was reasonable, come to that. There was no reason for her to feel defensive and vaguely self-conscious whenever Max’s name came up.

‘How long is he away for?’ asked Pel.

‘At least four months. It’s worked out really well,’ she hurried on before Pel could start tutting about short-term solutions. ‘It’s saved Max having to find a short-term tenant or leave the place empty, and it’s given me time to look around for somewhere else. The apartment’s perfect for me, too. It couldn’t be more convenient for work. I can cycle there in five minutes. So you see, the party isn’t really an extravagance,’ she said, hoping to divert Pel from the subject of Max. ‘I’ll only be spending the money I would otherwise have had to fork out on travel costs.’

Her ploy didn’t work. For once Pel failed to rise to the bait of correcting her ropey economics. ‘I’d forgotten Lucy had another brother,’ he was saying. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met Max. Was he at her wedding?’

‘I think so,’ said Freya, who had spent the entire wedding trying to avoid him, not an easy task when he was the bride’s brother and she was chief bridesmaid.

‘Hmm…’ Pel searched his memory. ‘What does he look like?’

Picking up her glass, Freya pretended to sip her gin as an uncomfortably vivid image of Max settled in her mind. Max, with his quiet face and his cool mouth and the sardonic amusement glimmering in his unnervingly pale grey eyes.

‘Oh, you know…’

‘No,’ said Pel pointedly.

‘He’s very ordinary,’ she said, proud of her careless shrug. ‘A bit dull, really. Not the kind of man you’d notice at a party. He’s one of those save-the-world-before-breakfast types who thinks building a few roads in a developing country gives him the moral high ground on every other issue.’

Pel sat back in his chair and smiled knowingly. ‘Ah, it’s like that, is it?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Freya stiffly.

‘You and Max had a thing together, didn’t you?’

‘What on earth makes you think that?’ she asked with an unsuccessful laugh.

‘Intuition,’ said Pel smugly. ‘Plus the fact that your face goes all funny when you talk about him.’

Involuntarily, Freya’s hands went to her cheeks. ‘It does not!’

‘Yes, it does.’ Narrowing his eyes, Pel pretended to peer mystically into the bottom of his glass. ‘I’m getting the sense that you made a bit of a fool of yourself over this Max,’ he said portentously.

Freya eyed him sourly. Pel was just a little too clever for his own good, sometimes. ‘Very funny,’ she said, un-amused.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ He leant conspiratorially towards her. ‘Come on, Freya, ’fess up!’

She hesitated, moving her glass around on the bar until she had a pattern of interlocking rings. Pel would never let it go now that he had the whiff of a secret. ‘You must promise not to tell anyone else,’ she said at last.

‘Cross my heart and hope to die!’

‘It was at Lucy’s twenty-first,’ she began reluctantly. ‘It was a great party, but I’d had a terrible row with my first real boyfriend that afternoon, and I was in a bad way. I didn’t want to spoil Lucy’s day, though, so I pretended that Alan was on emergency call and couldn’t make it. It was awful.’

Freya shuddered at the memory and took a slug of gin. ‘I had to pretend to be having a fantastic time when all I wanted to do was go home and cry. I really thought Alan was the love of my life, and I couldn’t think about life without him.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Pel. ‘You had too much to drink?’

She sighed. ‘If you know so much, why am I telling you this?’

‘Because I want to know where the mysterious Max fits in. Go on!’

‘Well, Max was there, of course. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years. He’d just come back from Africa, and he looked really different.’

Freya paused, her mind going back six years. Max had looked taller and more solid than she’d remembered, and older than his twenty-seven years. After a couple of years in the African sun, his grey eyes had been startlingly, even shockingly light in his brown face. Freya could still remember the tiny jerk of her heart when she had recognised him across the room.

‘He wasn’t enjoying himself either, but then he was never a party animal,’ she remembered. ‘I could see him watching me occasionally with that disapproving expression of his—that was exactly the same as I remembered—but he didn’t say a word to me until I got to the point when I didn’t think I could bear it for a second more. He came over and just said that I’d had enough to drink, and that he was taking me home.’

‘Mmm…the masterful type?’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said Freya, grimacing into her glass at the memory. ‘I tried to tell him I didn’t want to go, but he just ignored me, and the next thing I knew I was being frog-marched out to his car.’

Pel was leaning forward, agog. ‘Did he make a pass at you?’

‘Worse,’ said Freya tersely.

‘Worse?’ Pel’s eyes were out on stalks. ‘My God, what did he do?’

‘It wasn’t what he did. It was what I did.’ Her cheeks were burning and she pressed her hands to her face. ‘I tried to flirt with him.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. Max is completely unflirtable.’

It was obvious that Pel was disappointed. He had been expecting something more dramatic. ‘Was that it?’

‘No, then I started to cry.’ Freya took a long pull of gin, trying not to cringe at the memory. ‘I told him all about Alan and how much I loved him and how my life was in ruins. It was pathetic!’

‘Tears? Oh, dear.’ Pel’s mouth turned down at the corners in sympathy. ‘What did Max do?’

‘He just let me snivel while he drove me home.’ She could see Max now, standing on her doorstep, holding out his hand for her key, which she had meekly handed over. ‘When we got there, he made me drink a vat of water until I’d sobered up. He sat on the sofa next to me and told me about living in Africa while I drank glass after glass.

‘It was the first I’d heard about Mbanazere,’ she went on, a distant expression in her green eyes. ‘I remember Max telling me about staying in a hotel by the Indian Ocean and eating crab mayonnaise sandwiches under the palm trees. He made it sound so…so magical, I suppose, that I got caught up in the whole thing, like a dream. It’s the only way I can explain it.’

‘Explain what?’

Freya fiddled with her glass. ‘It was really strange, but as he talked I suddenly began to find him irresistible. One minute I was rambling on about being dumped by Alan and the next I could hardly keep my hands off Max. It was bizarre! I mean, I’d never found him remotely attractive before, but it was like being possessed. I honestly couldn’t do anything about it.’

She squirmed, remembering how she had tried to slide seductively along the sofa, only to spoil the effect by toppling against him. The way Max had frozen as she whispered huskily in his ear. That heart-stopping pause before his arms had come round her and pulled her down onto the cushions.

‘I must have been completely blootered,’ she said, shifting uncomfortably on her stool.

But not so blootered that she couldn’t remember everything that had happened then in extraordinary detail.

‘Everyone has embarrassing moments like that,’ Pel tried to console her, seeing her scarlet cheeks. ‘I remember when—well, never mind. The thing is, it could have been a lot worse. It’s not as if you—’

He broke off as he noticed Freya’s expression. ‘Ah,’ he said in belated realisation. ‘You did?’

She nodded.

There was a pause. Pel cleared his throat. ‘So what happened? Afterwards, I mean,’ he added hastily.

‘Nothing.’ Freya concentrated on twisting the glass between her fingers. ‘Max couldn’t wait to leave. Said it had been a mistake, and that it would be better if we both pretended that it had never happened. Which was fine by me.

‘I mean, it was a relief,’ she went on, very conscious that she sounded as if she were still trying to convince herself. ‘I’d been lying there, wondering how I was going to face him in the morning. He was Lucy’s brother. It was practically incest.’

Pel snorted. ‘Rubbish!’

‘That’s what it felt like,’ she insisted. ‘It wasn’t even as I’d ever liked him that much. He was certainly never the stuff of my adolescent fantasies. He’s not bad-looking, but there’s nothing special about him either, and he was always too serious and stuffy to have any fun. He used to look down his nose at Lucy and me, and make the kind of cutting remarks that you never quite knew how to take.’

Freya brooded into her glass, thinking about Max and his uncanny ability to make her feel stupid. ‘Anyway, I was perfectly happy to pretend that it had never happened. Max obviously wished it hadn’t, and so did I.’

‘Really?’

Her eyes slid away from Pel’s. ‘Well…’

‘Ooh, Freya, it was fantastic, wasn’t it?’

‘Pel!’

‘You can’t fool me.’ Pel was enjoying himself hugely. He loved gossip, especially if he was the only one in the know. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

‘No! Yes! Oh, I don’t know,’ she admitted on a sigh. ‘It was like we were two entirely different people in a completely different world.’

‘Sounds like the ultimate fantasy,’ commented Pel.

‘Well, it’s not mine, and I’m quite sure it wasn’t Max’s,’ said Freya tartly. ‘As far as I’m concerned it was just an embarrassing incident, which I’d really rather forget. It’s six years ago now, and Max and I have hardly exchanged a word since. When I saw him at Lucy’s wedding last year, he behaved as if he hadn’t seen me since Lucy and I were doing our A-levels.’

She couldn’t quite keep an edge of chagrin from her voice. It might be a huge relief to think that Max had no memory of that embarrassing night, but no girl wanted to know that she could be quite so comprehensively forgotten, especially when she herself had had so much trouble putting the whole incident from her mind.

‘He’d obviously forgotten the whole business,’ she said.

‘You haven’t,’ Pel pointed out.

‘Only because I’m living in his apartment with all his things. I hadn’t thought of him for years before Lucy suggested that I move in there,’ she added, not entirely truthfully.